An early Easter as the season of light arrives

Country Living with Francis Farragher

Alas, our recent couple of weeks of glorious Spring weather may not survive into the Easter Holiday period, but after the battering of wind and rain we received from the early days of November through to the first week of March, the sight of blue skies and sunshine was a most welcome visitor.

Sunshine and simple clear daylight with a blue sky in the background do really help to lift the moods and spirits of people, and especially those who do a lot of their work in the great outdoors.

It is not uncommon for many people to slip into a more melancholic or sombre humour with the onset of Winter and the trigger for that process is the declining hours of daylight and sunshine that we encounter from October onto the later days of February.

SAD, or seasonally affective disorder, has been an accepted medical condition for many years now, but assuming that the ailment is not more deep rooted, its natural antidote is the kind of weather we experienced over the past couple of weeks.

We are facing into a very early Easter period with the biggest celebration in the Church calendar all going to be done and dusted with a few days to spare before the arrival of April.

Some of the elders in my ‘local’ will no doubt remind me not to be ‘crowing’ too much about the good weather of March and warn of the imminent arrival of what are known as ‘The Ould Cow Days’, and every so often, whether by luck or good management, they can hit the jackpot with this one.

‘The Ould Cow Days’ is one of those lovely tales from Irish mythology that recounts how the Bó Riabhach or brindled/spotted cow, had hit out at the badness of a particularly harsh March.

As the tales goes though, she went a bit too far when she goaded March by saying that despite all the malice shown by the third month of the year, it had still failed to kill her off. March, upset by this taunting, was to embark on a mission of vicious revenge.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.